KerbalX

The Final Solution in Asteroid Recovery/Redirection.

This craft can operate indefinitely, fetching any class asteroid back to LKO (although with class E’s you may want to do some aerobraking). It can just keep hopping between asteroids forever. All the fuel it requires is obtained from the asteroids it captures, but will still leave plenty of unmined resources in the asteroid once back at LKO.

The tanks are all set to be empty of oxidizer (and oxidizer flow is locked) except for two OscarB tanks (inside the cargo bays). These two OscarB tanks have flow unlocked for both liquid and oxidizer and are intended to fuel the powercells. As all the other tanks are locked to oxidizer, running the converter to produce oxidizer will just keep these two topped up. The fuel cells will start automatically at launch.

Run liquid and oxidizer conversion separately (don’t run the Lf+Ox option), this will allow it to keep the two OscarBs topped up with oxidizer and won’t stop liquid production when they are full.

The two fuel cells are enough to run the mining rig, the solar panels are there as a fall back and to radiate heat. Note there is a canary part in one of the cargo bays; the atmo-analyser will be the first part to explode if the craft gets too hot. The other science parts are there because…..science.

One cargo bay contains science gear, the other one has a satellite dish. (cargo bays toggle with 2, sat-dish with 3). Both bays have small docking ports incase you need to come say hi to it once launched.

Dont run the engines at full throttle for extended periods. Run them at around 80-90% to avoid overheat.

Launches a-top a DeltaV heavy (with cluster engines)

Science Bay

Coms Bay

NOTE - pics show craft with MechJeb, but I took it off before posting it for you non-mechjeb folk.

NOTE there is a bug when running the converter and engines at the same time - see bug details here

(who needs heat shields anyway)

What happened to the MKI version? It got fired, literally, out of the solar system.